Quality Merchandise (Updated July 2008)

In this age of consumerism quality seems to have taken a nose dive.

Be careful about brand names, check they are still made in their country of origin. You will be surprised to find how many goods associated with a particular country have moved their manufacturing to China, Vietnam, Thailand, etc. Some examples: Ugg, Clark, Earth and Ecco shoes are all made in China now. Support manufacturing in your own country for they provide jobs for your neighbors and the money stays in your country. When this is not possible buy from countries whose environmental and labor laws meet your standards. When you are buyig cotton items remember to look for orgnaic cotton. With this in mind here is a list of products whose quality I think is outstanding. **New additions are added at the bottom**

Brora clothes
http://www.brora.co.uk/

Don't blame me if you spend a lot of money at this store. I could have bought everything in the store. In the end I bought a skirt, a scraf, some tops and some shoes. The cashmere is top quality not the cheap stuff that is in the average stores and the products are made in Scotland. Most of the linen is Irish. I want to sleep in the scraf it is so soft and wonderful. Here are some pictures




Dr.Hauschka skin products
http://www.drhauschka.com/about/our-mission

I have been using Dr. Hauschka Skin Care products for many years now primiarily because they are a holistic pharmaceutical company. Everything they do is in the interest of fostering well-being in the world, from their ecologically sound methods of growing and sourcing ingredients to their one-of-a-kind manufacturing processes and international fair trade initiatives. Their manufacturer WALA Heilmittel works with local communities around the world to establish fair-trade organic and Biodynamic cooperatives that provide WALA with the highest quality botanical ingredients while helping promote sustainable agriculture and economic self-reliance.

They also support two of my favorite organizations: Heifer International and Farm Aid.



El Naturalista
http://www.elnaturalista.com/index.php/en/naturalista/eco-policy/

A terrific example of what a company with high aspirations can be. This panish company could write a blueprint on how a company can be both ethical to its employees and the land that we depend on and make a profit. Their eco policy is to use natural materials and dyes, avoid polluting substances,protect and sustain the environment and much more. And check out these goofy shoes.


In 2005 they created the Charity Project Atauchi where they work with non-profit organizations, to provide international development aid. They worked with ProPeru an NGO from Pamplona in the construction and equipment of a school including solar panels, and trained teachers and pupils. In 2007, they received the Solidarity company Prize 2005 from the mayor of Pamplona

Anna Sova
http:www/annasova.com/
Much of her organic cotton is made in coops in India, one of the two largest contries that grow organic cotton. Anna Sova sellls the nicest organic cotton sheets that I have ever slept on. Also she sells orgnaic drapery whichis pretty unusual. Her orgnaic cotten towels ar made in Turkey (the second largest producer of organic cotton.) The dyes and sizing used in our cotton are eco safe and healthy for you and for the environment!
Be aware that “natural” cotton is NOT organic cotton. Natural cotton still uses pesticides and processing toxins.

Many people may consider latex wall paint to be a safe alternative because they do not contain lead. However, there are harmful Volatile Organic Compounds that are released from the paint. Some of these chemicals are petrochemicals, solvents, mercury, formaldehyde, and benzene some of which have been known to cause cancer, allergies and aggravate asthma.
Anna Sova’s healthy Wall Finish contains none of these harmful VOC’s, and is made with 99% food grade ingredients! A much healthier alternative that is safe for children and pregnant women.


Feyem of Italy
http://www.feyem.it/eng/home.htm



Their coats are beautifully made. Quality material, goose down, zips, and snaps over the zips. The warm weather coats close from the top to the hemline. The stitching on the coats are very good also. They are extremley stylish and you feel like a diva when you wear one.

Santana, La Candienne and Martino boots. All were made in Canada until recently when Santana was bought by a group of investors who moved the operation to China. All three of these companies make an excellent product. The boots are completely water proof, very comfortable, and stylish. You can still find a few Santana boots made in Canada. Check the label before you buy.

La Candienne
http://www.lacanadienne.ca/

A 45 year old company in Montreal with and excellent environmental and worker rights record.

Martino is a 50 year old company located in Quebec City. It too has a history of making sophisticated, fully waterproof snow boots built for style and sub zero temperatures. They are made from very fine full grain leather, hand cut one piece at a time by Martino factory trained cobblers.





Natura World
http://www.naturaworld.com/


This is beginning to look like a love affair with Canada. The absolute best cover I have ever slept under. It is an all season wool comforter, quite light weight, perhaps the weight of one and half regular blankets. I love it to death. Be careful as they sell both organic and non organic cotton and wool covers. They are all made in Canada with the exception of the silk and wool cover. I am absolutely in love with it.

Bags: It seems that no matter how many bags I owe I never have one that works for the task at hand. In particular luggage and shopping bags. Here is one of each that work for me.

Tote Bag

Reisenthel a German Company make a super lightweight bag from rip stop polyester that folds into a tiny pocket bag that clips onto your handbag (clever). It is stylish and holds up to 26lb of weight.

. The bags are actually nicer than the photo. The website that they are listed on is an excellent website for a variety of bags.

http://www.reusablebags.com/store/shopping-bags-c-2.html

Suitcase
for luggage nothing in the price range can beat a Briggs and Riley case.
They are stylish designed extremely well have great, solid zips, and an outside pouch for your small umberella. They are guaranteed for life with no questions asked and made in the U.S.A. (finally!)
Ebags is a very good website for getting detailed pictures of products and also for their returm policy.
http://www.ebags.com/briggs_riley/transcend_21_carryon_expandable_upright/product_detail/index.cfm?modelid=61500&productid=707036&sourceID=GOOGFEED&color=Rainforest&CAWELAID=26892532ns

Animals, Community, Fairness, Vegan, and Yoga

What do they have in connection with each other? Well, if you visit the Karma Yoga Studio and teashop at 1120 Massachusetts Ave, in Cambridge you will find out. The tea shop looks very similar to a Japanese tea house (as much as is possible anyway), they sell only vegan snacks, fair trade coffee and tea, and a few fair trade products from the World of Good.

The painting on the far wall is titled Rose Petal Mandala by Lori Schouela
www.lori.schouela@comcast.net


The Karma Tea Cafe donates 100% of all cow's milk sales to the Farm Sanctuary in MA. The teashop was also selling animal cards made by students from the Dr. Martin Luther King School in Cambridge. The bulletin board holds pamphlets on animal rescue groups such as Grey2K USA.

The instructors who teach the Flow Yoga class on Sunday’s 6:00-7:30 pm donate all proceeds to local animal rescue groups. In addition, the owners pump all their profits into their animal rescue efforts run out of their home. Their teachers come from many different countries and cover any different styles of yoga.

Doina Contescu, one half of the partnership, is a certified wildlife rehabilitation specialist and her passion ranges from animal rights/welfare, to theoretical physics, moral philosophy and meditation. Doina graduated from Harvard University in 1989. She currently hosts a monthly potluck vegetarian dinner at the studio, is a member of the Harvard College Vegetarian Society and a member of the Boston Vegan Meetup.

I very much admire her integrated and effective effort to support her life’s passions.

http://www.originalgood.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=75

http://www.karmayogastudio.com

Bursa in October 2006. Cumalıkızık Village is located 10 kilometers west of Bursa, in the foothills of Mt. Uludağ. Its history goes back to the founding of the Ottoman Empire. Many of the architectural structures in the village have been preserved and thus as of late, the village has been featured in many Turkish movies. This has resulted in a renewed interest in the village by the Turks and there are now 270 historial houses in stages of restoration and maintenace. 180 houses that have been lived in for some time.


As can been seen by the photographs, the houses are made of wood, mud, and rubblestones and most of them are triplex. The upstairs windows are generally latticed with a bay window.

The handles and knockers on the main entry doors are made out of wrough iron. The smaller knockers are used by the women and the larger one by the men. Each knocker produces a different sound, thus people inside the house know what gendered person is about to enter; this was important for religious and cultural reasons.

As can be seen from some of the photographs the streets are cobblestoned, very narrow, and have no sidewalk.

The village has a mosque, a fountain, and a bath house with one dome which go back to the time of the Ottoman Empire. In 1969, the remains of a Byzantine church were unearthed in the southeast of the village.


Kizik refers to the villages that are clustered together between the foot of Mt. Uludag and the valleys and the name stands for one of the twenty-four clans of the Oghuz Turks. Friday’s (Cuma in Turkish) were a day of formal gathering for worship in the village. The village contains a ethnography musuem where the village has collected historial objects of interest. There are some additional architectural works from the village on display in the Archeological Museum of Bursa.

Into Great Silence

Into Great Silence (Die Grobe Stille) 2005

This documentary was filmed in the Grande Chartreuse, the head monastery of the reclusive Carthusian Order in France. Philip Groning, the German director and writer first approached the monastery sixteen years ago for permission to film; he was told that it would not happen soon, and indeed it didn’t. However, as you watch the documentary you will appreciate how time is something that is not hurried.

Unbeknownst to me this was a movie that the viewer participated in! By which I mean, you sat there for three hours watching a move with about as many words as in a three minute song. That said, by the end of the movie I would willingly have sat through it again straight away.

The opening introduction is very slow and it takes 25 minutes before you hear a sound. The opening shots show a row of identical buildings with black roof’s that looked just like Dutch burghers with their tall black hats accentuated by the fact that snow is falling.

Philip Groning lived in the monestry for six months and thus he films the monks daily rituals, prayers, tasks and weekly forrays to the outside world. In fact, so little is going on that you soon begin to appreciate the small things in life, very small, such as the grain in the wood on the floors, the ice crystals on the lettuces in the garden, and the water dripping from the roof very, very slowly. The photographer places great emphasis on light in the documentary which made me think of God saying, “Let there be light” and there was (Genesis 1.3). The documentary builds quietly upon itself and ¾ of the way through it you feel that everything is at one with nature or to put it another way, that to disturb nature is an affront, to live in harmony with it is not.

Every cell appears to have a window that opens out to the wonderful scenery outside. It is this natural world that provides substance to the soul and food for the body. There were a couple of shots of the white cows with their bells ding aligning as they moved around the land munching at whatever, and you thought "what a life” even if later on in their life they are their source of food for the monks.

The monastery is in the Chartreuse Mountains (part of the French Alps) in Eastern France and the original building goes back to 1084. When it rained, the rain seemed like a joyful gift. When the mist hovered over the range it seemed the mist was actually spirits, and when the monks sang their beautiful Gorgonian chants it felt as if they were singing to the spirits, thus creating a bridge to the “other” world.

Today the monastery is closed to the public and the monks support themselves by the production and sale of Chartreuse liqueur, which interestingly was not captured in the documentary at all which seems an ommission.

Toward the end of the documentary the film maker interviewed a very elderly monk on his thoughts about dying. The monk said he was not afraid of death, "the faster you run to God the happier you are". I then recalled how death is a word that you don’t hear much spoken in the U.S. we prefer to use other words such as “passing on” or “deceased” and it made me wonder why such a Christian nation is afraid of death.

The Joy of Cats

My foster cats are five months old and are called Harpo and Carly. They are both black and white and look pretty cute as they follow each other around the house. Harpo is short hair and Carly is medium haired. Her tail looks like it was stuck on by accident because there is a fine white line between the end of her black rump and black fluffy tail.

Harpo is very aptly named. He is the funniest and the best natured cat you are ever likely to have the opportunity to own; if one can “own” a cat. He watches TV literally, and particularly likes Ovation and National Geographic. He also plays on the computer. He achieves this by jumping on the chair, standing on his two hind legs, and hitting the keys with his paws. His head then goes side to side as he watches the changes on the computer. His is also a flying cat. If you start to play ball with him he will literally leap four feet from wherever he is, flying through the air to get to the ball. And don’t bend down, not even slightly because he will make a flying leap onto your back where he will stay regardless of whether you decide to straighten up or not. And did I mention that he has a fetish! I am not kidding. You cannot let him sleep on the bed with you because you won’t sleep. He starts padding on your upper body (somewhere between you chin and your upper chest), and sucking, and eating your top, and all the while he is purring as loud as a Bengal Tiger. Today I tried to see when he would stop but after 45 minutes I gave up and deposited him in his room

Carly is a very pretty cat and very independent minded. She was part of a litter of kittens that were found at a used car lot. Unfortunately they all died, most likely from drinking anti-freeze. Carly was very sick but managed to pull through after three days in the vet. She is very timid; if you put your hand out to her she will run away (first option) or back up into a corner. But she loves sleeping on your bed. So while you are being devoured by Harpo she has settled on you. She cannot sit by you it has to be on you. If she falls off, she just crawls back up. She will come right up to your face and lick it and you can stroke her. But once you leave the bed all bets are off. Oh! And did I mention that she collects stuff. IF you try to play with her she grabs the object and very briskly, with her tail up in the air, runs off and deposints all the goods in a corner under my bed.

So if anyone out there would like to adopt these two adorable kitties here is their picture. You will need to fill out an application form from Cat Connection as they are the good folks who paid the vet bill and had them fixed.

Winter in New England

Greetings from Boston

In December, 2007 we had a record amount of snow. It is now January 13th and another storm is coming in with a predicted foot of snow for Boston. So what does this mean to hardy Bostonians? A lot of snow shoveling that is what.

The last time I remember so much snow was in 1994. By the end of the winter, the towns had sent out their snow plows 14 times! The total amount of snow recorded at Logan airport for the entire winter was 9.0.3” inches. To non-Americans this translates (I hope) to 2.29 meters. As you moved away from the coast the snow was considerably more. Towns are very careful how they spend their snow plow funds so they only send out their plows when there is a lot of snow, thus you know we had more that 14 snow days.

I personally wish we could get all the snow in one storm like the Blizzard of 1978. We would be inconvenienced just once. So much snow fell during that blizzard that the government ordered all roads closed – only plows and doctors were allowed on the streets. I think it must have been fun to be stuck at home but I had left the day before and was sitting in London watching the pictures on the news and being truly amazed.

But back to the shoveling issue; shoveling out a long driveway is not fun but we have to get to our cars and also clear the pavement so that folks can walk on it safely. You also have to shovel around your mailbox and hydrant (should you have one) and enlist help to shovel out your elderly neighbor(s) if you have any. Or should I say this is how it was done in 1994. In 2007, we do not seem as neighborly. Many folks don’t bother to clean the pavement outside their house so that folks are forced to walk in the road which makes matters even worse for drivers trying to navigate bad road conditions. Anyway, shoveling so much snow leaves one weary. Doing this over and over and each time trying to lift the snow ever higher over the top of mounting snow banks makes one exhausted and snappish.

For those of you who live in warm climates, you have to realize that it is imperative to shovel the snow promptly otherwise, the cold temperature causes it to freeze. Once it becomes ice, you are in big trouble. In December alone I had two friends who had bad accidents. One broke her ankle and one had severe head concussion both from falling on ice.

Adding to the feeling of hopelessness are the snowplows. No sooner do you clear your way out of the house, then the plows come through to clear the streets. Of course, they plow the street snow right on top of the path you just cleared. This snow is wet and packed down by the plow blade, so it is heavy and a *&^% to lift. The plows come through several times, so you have repeated opportunities to mutter *&^%.

So remember, if you are trying to contact someone in an office or business, or even your own town’s highway department on a snow day, they have just gone through everything you just have and their energy is sapped too. Be polite and remember that we are only three weeks into the winter season. Happy snow plowing, remember to bend your knees when you are shoveling, and to exercise all year – it helps.

My Old Wool Coat

Story and picture of Smokey courtsey of the author William Coolidge III.

I read this story in the SmallFarmer's Journal, summer 2007, and thought it a wonderful story of compassion and redemption.

After takin’ more than a decade off from deer hunting, I allowed my older son to cajole me into buying a big game license last fall. Naturally, one of the first things I had to do, if I was once again going into the woods in pursuit of the wily whitetail, was get all of my old huntin’ gear together. The rifles, ammo, compass, boots and wool pants were all in fine shape and rarin’ to go, but my ol’ red & black, “buffalo plaid” wool hunting coat had seen better times ~ it was gettin’ a little threadbare in spots, the zipper was ripping out, and besides that, it seemed a tad small on me, after so many years of ‘neglect’! Must’ve shrunk while it was hangin’ in the closet, that’s all I can figure!??

Well, a few days later, in conversation with my mother, I mentioned that I needed to buy a new hunting jacket. At which point she said, “Jeez, Bill, your father’s good Woolrich hunting coat is still hanging in the upstairs closet ~ or, would that be too small on you?”

Now, there’s NO wool coat in the world that I’d rather wear than the one that had belonged to my Dad, but since he had passed away nearly 4 years earlier, I had forgotten all about his coat. Well, Mom dug it out, I tried it on, and it fit like it was custom-made for me ~ I felt as warm and snug as if I was wrapped in my father’s arms.

Thanks to my son, Billy, who had persuaded me to go hunting again, I now had a special treasure in my possession ~ one that otherwise might never have come my way! And, equally as important, it freed up my old wool hunting coat for what was about to take place.

On Veteran’s Day afternoon, my cat, Smokey,

suddenly lost the use of his hindquarters, and began yowling in a strident, high-pitched cry, as if to signal us that he was in a great deal of pain. Now Smoke (a velvety-soft, steel-grey, domestic short hair…. and so much more), was not an old cat, by any means ~ approximately 20 months of age is all he was. But he had sustained some type of injury to his hips the summer before, and after being X-ray’d to confirm that he had no broken bones, the vet put him on Prednisone and he was soon pretty much his old self again. But an observant eye could perceive that he’d always lie down a little awkwardly, that he enjoyed laying under the woodstove (much as an older cat or dog likes to ‘soak up the heat’ into their arthritic joints), and that he definitely had a bit of a “hitch in his git-along.” He loved nothing more than to stretch out on the bed beside me at night, snuggling himself as tightly as he could against my thigh.

So, when I headed down off Rand Hill that Saturday afternoon, takin’ my “ol’ buddy” to the vet, I never had an inkling that it was anything more than another bout of what he’d experienced the previous summer. After a couple of X-rays, however, I received the bad news: Smokey had congestive heart failure (rare in such a young animal), & had ‘thrown a clot’ which lodged in his femoral artery, effectively cutting off most of the circulation, and all of the feeling, in his hind legs.

Thus began 48 hours of tears, prayers, pacing and nail-biting (on our part), and medication, oxygen therapy, electrocardiograms and ultrasounds for Smoke. Although he put up one heck of a valiant fight (in the words of the vet who was treating him, he had “an amazing will”), Smokey passed away, peacefully, 2 days later.

So, on a gray, rainy Monday afternoon in mid-November, I wrapped myself in the wool coat I’d “inherited” from my father, then wrapped my four-legged best friend in my old wool coat and laid him to rest in one of his favorite places in this world ~ right beneath our bird feeder!


Two final thoughts: To the wonderfully-compassionate veterinarian who went ‘above and beyond’ in her efforts to save my beloved cat, I offer yet another heart-felt “Thank you!”

And, regarding hunting season: I think that it’s over for me, at least for the foreseeable future. I just don’t think I could bring myself to take the life of an animal now ~ and, I seriously question whether I ever will again…. [In retrospect, that’s OK, though; for if Smoke, in his passing, saved the lives of others in the animal kingdom, then he did not die in vain.]